Abstract painter Wendy Lowengrub and photographer Cindy Stokes provides complimentary views of form and pattern of nature through their respective mediums.

Cindy Stokes, Burn II, Dynamic Form series, gelatin silver print, 2007. Dynamic Form book will also be available.

The black-and-white photographs in Dynamic Form reflect my visual attraction to pattern and form in both natural and manmade materials. This interest is intensified by some knowledge of the underlying physics and biology from my engineering and science background. Why naturally occurring structures so often wind up visually alluring remains a mystery. Some forms are clearly functional and display principles of efficiency, while others seem purely serendipitous, although that idea may simply reflect my lack of understanding. Emergent patterns reveal fortuitous combinations of geometry and chance; paradoxically, very similar patterns occur on widely differing scales and arise from surprisingly different phenomena. The forms seem universal while the media are irrelevant, left to our imagination. ~Cindy Stokes

Wendy Lowengrub, Glaciology, mixed media on canvas, 2007

The Glaciology exhibit is a series of paintings inspired by a trip to the Souther Patagonian Ice Fields in Chile and Argentina. Deep glacial crevasses and the undersides of icebergs that calve off glaciers reveal ice that is a beautiful, surreal and indescribably blue. This ice may be hundreds, if not thousands, of years old. The ice absorbs all the colors of the visible spectrum with the exception of blue, which it transmits. These paintings are about the search for this color and form. ~Wendy Lowengrub